{"id":1232,"date":"2008-09-27T08:49:43","date_gmt":"2008-09-27T16:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2009-11-19T21:49:41","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T05:49:41","slug":"how-hard-can-it-be-to-get-a-new-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/how-hard-can-it-be-to-get-a-new-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hard Can It Be to Get a New Laptop?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While driving my son to speech therapy 3 mornings a week, I keep hearing this ad for <a href=\"http:\/\/ripoffreport.com\/searchResults.asp?q1=ALL&amp;q2=&amp;q3=&amp;q4=&amp;q5=blue%20hippo&amp;q6=&amp;q7=&amp;searchtype=0&amp;submit2=Search!&amp;r=1\">Blue<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/BlueHippo_Funding\">Hippo<\/a>, a company that is targeting people who have too poor of credit to get that utterly vital laptop. They really talk it up.<\/p>\n<p>Drives me nuts.<\/p>\n<p>Typical offer for people who have poor credit; they don&#8217;t care how poor your credit is. They say they will get you that laptop. And in my area they&#8217;re even offering a free MP3 player and digital camera to go with it, which I find hilarious. I&#8217;ve bought cheap ones of each for around $10 around Christmas last year. They have a ways to go to impress me.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, you make a down payment and 13 weeks of payments before you get anything. By the complaints linked above, getting what you paid for is at least sometimes problematic, so I thought about other ways people could get a laptop if that&#8217;s what they really wanted.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.freecycle.org\/\">Freecycle<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Maybe a long shot, maybe not. No doubt it would not be a new machine, but if you just need a basic laptop you can ask. Someone might have one they want to get rid of.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.craigslist.org\/\">Craigslist<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I checked the listings in my area, and there were a variety of laptops available. If you&#8217;re paying for something you have to be careful about what you get, of course, but there were a number of cheap laptops listed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Saving Up<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Should be obvious, but to some it isn&#8217;t. Nice part is that if you save up you can get a new machine or one that has been refurbished, depending on your needs.<\/p>\n<p>According to Wikipedia, to get the Blue Hippo computer it&#8217;s $99 down and $39 a week for 13 weeks. If you can stick to that plan you&#8217;ve saved up $606. You can get a laptop from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/b?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;site-redirect=&amp;node=565108&amp;tag=homewiththeki-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Amazon<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=homewiththeki-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> in that price range.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, it just drives me nuts seeing something like this that takes advantage of the desperate, who, if they could make those payments could just as easily save up for a laptop on their own, and not pay an outrageous price.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do Without<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And you really can&#8217;t forget the option to simply do without if things are all that bad. How many people really, truly need a laptop computer? They&#8217;re nice&#8230; I really want one myself. I was having some serious laptop envy during BlogWorld. But I do not, repeat, do NOT need one badly enough to spend the money.<\/p>\n<p>There are some people who can have a greater need for one, such as college students. It&#8217;s not an utter necessity at most colleges, even if they are getting to be more common.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the part of the ad that drives me the most nuts in a lot of ways. They&#8217;re trying so hard to make it seem like lacking a laptop is a major impact on your life in general. It&#8217;s not. It can be an inconvenience for some lifestyles, but really, how often do most people pull a laptop out of a bag because they really need to use it? Not just for fun.<\/p>\n<p>This post is a little off my usual path, but not completely from my point of view. I&#8217;m just seeing an ad that is targeting people who don&#8217;t have a lot of money, which is common for stay at home parents, and pointing out the ways around it. Seems reasonable to me, and the occasional rant feels good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While driving my son to speech therapy 3 mornings a week, I keep hearing this ad for Blue Hippo, a company that is targeting people who have too poor of credit to get that utterly vital laptop. They really talk it up. Drives me nuts. Typical offer for people&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[244],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","tag-laptop-computers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Hard Can It Be to Get a New Laptop? - Home with the Kids Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.homewiththekids.com\/blog\/how-hard-can-it-be-to-get-a-new-laptop\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Hard Can It Be to Get a New Laptop? - Home with the Kids Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"While driving my son to speech therapy 3 mornings a week, I keep hearing this ad for Blue Hippo, a company that is targeting people who have too poor of credit to get that utterly vital laptop. 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